Consider this: Women achieve potty parity in the House

In the U.S. House of Representatives, 72 of 435 members are women. While the numbers are not balanced, at least women now have more equitable bathroom accommodations.

Last month, amid the bickering and blame-game of the debt debate, the House quietly opened H211 as a women’s restroom adjacent to the House floor. The bathroom takes the space previously occupied by the Office of the Parliamentarian.

Before the new facility opened, female members of the House of Representatives had to trek through Statuary Hall to the Lindy Claiborne Boggs Congressional Women’s Reading Room to use the restroom. Men, on the other hand, have long had access to a restroom right off the floor of the House.

In 2007, Nancy Pelosi — the first female speaker of the House — created a room for nursing mothers. But it took a man, House Speaker John A. Boehner, to direct the official architect of the Capitol to create the women’s restroom — a small but important step toward equality of the sexes.